Hartford, CT Children Asphyxiated, July 1894

Hartford, Conn., July 30. -- RAYMOND, aged 9; LEROY, aged 7; and FREDDIE, aged 4, the children of James W. Ganlon, a locomotive engineer on the New York, New Haven & Hartford railroad, who have been missing since Thursday evening, when they went to bathe in the Connecticut River, were found dead at 8 o'clock Sunday morning in the closet of a freight caboose standing on a side track near the roundhouse, not 300 feet from their home. After numerous searches for two days Chief of Police Bill ordered the freight cars and railroad property searched, and two policemen were drawn to the caboose by the smell of decomposing flesh. In the closet, shut by a spring lock, they found the thre bodies entirely nude and badly decomposed. The inquest by Medical Examiner Fuller disclosed no evidence of foul play and he gave a verdict of accidental death by asphyxiation. The caboose was newly painted and the children went in to play, a pack of cards being found in the closet. It is supposed they closed the door and could not open it and soon suffocated in the stifling hot air of the narrow inclosure.